Watch your thoughts, they become words
Watch your words, they become actions
Watch your actions, they become habits
Watch your habits, they become character
Watch your character, its becomes destiny– Yasir Fazzaga
A few days ago, my phuppa passed away and although the death came as a shock for all of us, the way it was handled must be appreciated and followed as much as possible:
- Only mehram women were allowed to see my Phuppa’s corpse.
- Crying and wailing was kept to a minimum. Keeping women away from the dead body helped.
- No one, not even children and close relatives, were allowed to touch the dead body after takfin.
- The ritual of reciting Surah-e-Baqarah at a speed of 100 mph was prohibited. Surah-e-Baqarah is something to be implemented during life not to be read without understanding on someone’s death.
- The women were given a dars instead so that they would learn something about Islam rather than pretend to be reading Qur’an while gossiping with each other.
- After the burial, dua was made facing the Ka’aba rather than the grave.
- The mourning ended in 3 days, food was only served to guests on the first day.
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Two years have passed since Ch. Iftikhar was deposed, the movement that started to give freedom to judiciary is now only centered at getting Ch. Iftikhar reinstated and the party that came into power partly cuz of this movement has lost all interest in it. This whole circus is taking away attention from the core issues that the nation faces like inflation and terrorim as the politicians are all busy either dancing on the roads or trying to block them.
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It was the Women’s Day yesterday, a day I dont celebrate. But here’s a post that salutes the dauntlessness of a Pakistani woman which I just couldnt resist reading and sharing. Happy Women’s Day to all the women especially the ones who inspire us and give us the courage to be what we are.
EDIT: I just found out there is actually on an International Men’s day too 😛
Idle Curiosities 
The movie on Mukhtar Mai should be interesting. Shame there are people living in some stone cave age in the 1st place that such stories and events exist.
🙂
ab may kuch kahou ga to aap ko bura lag jai ga aur aap jawab nahi day gi 🙂
good post!
Great example, indeed…
i hope the rest of us are able to emulate some part of it…
i believe our death rituals are worse than our wedding traditions, bcoz they tend to incorporate some distorted form of our religion into themselves..whereas the wedding ones are just about “culture”, with little or no reference to Islam..
@ Sumera
I know wat u mean…but its good that we at least realize there are issues to be tackled
@ Ummi
thanks
@ Pinky
Its difficult to control oneself and everyone around wen there is a death in the family and especially the way these practices have become so embedded in our society, it is very hard to make people understand
Good to hear that people are finally trying to bring some sense in burial etc….I hope that it passes down the soceity might be a drip feed but it will atleast go through.
Ch. sahab’s war was always about Nawaz Sharif and never about lawyers, law and justice. If our lawyers were sincere to their roti rozi then Pakistan’s pathetic justice system. I have presonally come in contact with a few of them and honestly they are a disgrace to justice system.
About women’s day, i was watching a show by called “Aurat Kahani” hosted Maya Khan Rind and your write up has got me into to share a little story. A few months ago they brought a women on the show, she was burnt badly by an acid attack. I was at that time with a consultant friend of mine who happens to run an NGO for deprieved women so she asked me to contact the team of “Aurat Kahani” in order to look at the option of possible surgery paid by the NGO. I emailed the team of “Aurat Kahani” 4 times , I called the head office of the channel 3 times and finally I wrote to their media section twice but never got a single reply back. Unfortunately, this how it works. They sit and talk in assemblies, in kitty parties, in NGO’s run by women like Asma Jahangir or they do shows but they never go and sit in civil hospital to see how many women are burnt, beaten up etc by men and help them that way. In my opinion a seperate women’s court should be setup to make the justice process easier and faster….
long comment, but had to share
Ta-
Musarat Misbah (Depilex) is running an NPO by the name “Smile Again” to help women who have been burnt badly. I really like wat she is doing cuz she concentrates on very few cases and she uses most of her own money rather than eating up the money that other people donate to her. She does accept donations, you can make donations to her NPO if you want but make sure that u know where that money will be used. But personally, I dont trust these NGOs/NPOs so if something needs to be done, we have to do it ourselves. And even if we can help one woman in our lifetime, that would be worth it.
Secondly, as i said in my post, I dont like the idea of having a woman’s day…why not just treat us like humans. we either hear of human rights or woman rights. Arent women also humans? Why are women treated in an inhumane way in the very first place?
bhai pata nahin kia masla hay. phir nahi aya!
khair yehi kahna thaa k Pakistan me mard aur aurat dono mazlom hain chahye rural areas ho ya urban. kia aurtain masoom hoti hain? kya wo dhokay baz aur khabees nahi hotin? khali aurto ka rona kion hota hay mardoun ka kio nahin.
mujhe ye article bloggers.pk par mila aur mey in sahab se mutafiq houn
kadnan.com/blog/2009/03/10/no-day-for-men/
Ummi I never said key sab aurtein mazloom hoti hain. I am an independent woman…not mazloom in any sense. As for being dhokay baz and khabees, there are all sorts of women just as there are all sorts of men. I know women who are a bigger threat to other women than men. Wat I was trying to say was that why separate women from human. Have you ever heard of men rights? Read above wat I said: you either hear of human rights or women rights. Why are women thought to be ‘not’ a part of human race. Why separate them?
And oh yea, you are a new reader so you might not know this, but I am not a feminist. I dont even believe that women can do everything that men can do or vice verse. Call me backward and conservative but I will always believe that women are equal to men (in terms of rights) but not the same as men (in terms of roles), which gives women a completely different set of responsibilities.
mohatarma may ne aap ko nai un aurto ko kaha ha jo har waqt rona roti hain apni mazlomiat ka.
“you either hear of human rights or women rights. Why are women thought to be ‘not’ a part of human race. Why separate them?”
it’s all fuss created by NGOs otherwise reality is what you said above or mentioned in that blog post. Read the article I referred above which has clarified many things.
hey why the link I posted is not clickable? It also removed http://. Can it be fixed?
ppl can just copy-paste it to read the article. or i can enclose it in html code if you want.
Yeah, I have met her here. Smile Again also works in Bangladesh and India. They are doing very good work and the consultant friend of mine has done a few ops for them.
Your answer to why woman are being treated in a inhumane way is highjacking of the world by MEN. Its jungle raj when it comes to the current way of living life. Supress the weake and serve the stronger. It is unfortunate , woman who give birth, bring up kids, make a house a loving home, make world livable are treated in such a way…… Yet women’s day is confined to ONE DAY and after that it just disappears till next year. Every day should be women’s day…..
why even think of having a day? I mean I still dont understand the logic of confining love to one day, mom’s love to one day, dad’s love to another, friends’ love to some other day. cant we just try and do something every day and the western influence is having a real bad impact on our society. The feminist movements are not doing any good either. They are only telling women that wearing lesser clothes and not paying attention to family is women liberation…although it is actually the opposite. In fact by wearing lesser clothes women are doing wat men want them to do…look seductive for them!
That is what I said that everything is being confined to ONE DAY.
Women movements are a joke. The things common in women’s movement front runners are.
1. either they are single or lesbians
2. they smoke drink and party (liberation for them)
3. cap family values and try to break the rules, the rules which infact make them look more dignified.
etc etc etc.
I happened to meet a famous women’s right activist from Pakistan in London and honestly speaking my head dropped in shame. She spoke in conference for 20 mins. It was a powerful speech on showing how poor pakistani women are and all those -ve’s. It didnt carry the material that how Pakistani women are constructively working and competing well in our male dominant soceity and finally guess what after the conference it all faded away in open jokes, smoke, strong smell of whisky and a three course non halaal dinner….
The greatest threat to Pakistan is Pakistani’s…no one else!
first and foremost, it is important for Pakistani women to understand they are not weak. I am an independent woman so obviously I dont understand a lot of the things that most women in Pakistan might be going through but women like Mukhtar Mai are examples that Pakistani women have more courage than one can even think of.
The world has a lot of problems, people in it have a lot of problems, But when you think about it, the biggest problem is that the people who want to solve those problems are not unified and they dont really know where to start and how to solve those problems at the grand scale. They all have a slight idea of the solutions and they jump at it with little or no plan. What we need is to unify those efforts.
But again… Billi ke gulle main ghunti ko bandhe!
kis ko galey main ghanti bandhni hai? why not do small things that are in our own capacity. as i said earlier, it is just useless to celebrate these days, i dont celebrate any of these at all…and again, why have a women’s day in the first place! wat is needed is education, not a women’s day. I have a firm belief that all the problems in the world can be eradicated if education can be provided to everyone without any biases. I think I should do a post on that too.
My point is that women’s day or not, things around the world are NOT good AT ALL!!!, Try pollution, try environmental and climate changes, try extinction of species, try abuse of human rights, try poverty, hunger, women’s rights, children’s right…. The world has a lot of problems and they are BIG! Fifty years ago if you said we should do our part and be done with it I would have been all for it! But now its time the strong definitive, planned and quick actions need to take place in order to get things right. Now putting litter in the dustbin and teach children to do so aint gonna clean the toxic wastes which are laying around in tons! This does nt mean that we start throwing garbage on the street! it means that now we also need to take a look at the big picture too. Cuz it is high time! And we as the Human race need to solve problems that we took centuries to create!
The point is women are being treated badly everywhere including Pakistan! Holding Women’s day will not solve a problem, it will not even educate the uneducated, nor bring the cruel to justice. It is irrelevant! But in its defense it could grow awareness of some institutions of the presence of others so that they can combine their efforts! This can also be done without a women’s day too! But what I m saying is that THIS needs to happen, one way or another! We can no longer venture in disparate and vastly deviant directions, we need to combine and converge our effort if we want to really solve these problems!
Finally I AGREE completely with your theory! Education is the only thing which can really solve these problems in the long run and the others that would follow them. But one thing that also needs to happen is motivation! There are many educated people in this world! Are they all solving these problem? NO Most of them are not! They say this is not their job! We also need sheer motivation to actually solve anything!
Anyway, these are my two cents… Leken yeh ko kare ga? Billi ke galle main ghanti kon bande ga???
What do you mean by education here? The so called women day is celebrated by educated women. Women in villages do not even know about it.
Dude my POINT is nt women or women’s day or goddamn education for that matter!
To be able to look at the bigger picture, you will have to become a politician dude. Just as I heard someone say, an Edhi cant bring about change but a Jinnah can
Thats where we are wrong, we corrupted the politician by not providing an accountability. Besides politicians are supposed to be our leaders! An you gave the example of a “Great!” politician yourself… Jinnah! scale of everything has changed from big to small, you you can no longer ignore the bigger picture as in the past.
Things are nt as simple as “Save the cheerleader, Save the world!.”
i often feel sad that we have aspirations and dreams for ourselves and we dont want to make sacrifices for our country. I mean, how many of us would want to become political leaders ourselves? True Jinnah was a great leader but he was a human after all and he did face lots and lots of hurdles. He was a successful lawyer, he could have just stayed awy from politics and would have had a great married life too but he made sacrifices. if we dont have a true leader right now, one has to emerge from us only
I agree and thats what I have been saying for sooooo long!!!
Koi zaroor uth ke billi ke galle main ghanti bande ga! But again! Who? Who will take that initiative? You ? Me ? Anyone else? What have we actually sacrificed to deserve this world, this life, this great country?
my comment does not appear here! is it because I pasted a URL?
i looked in spam too, it aint there as well. post it again. if there is a url, try enclosing it in html code.
Leena, you know that I have been one of the oldest and one of the most silent readers of your blog. I try to stay quiet on as many things as I can because I dont want to get into any debates or arguments on your blog. But, this was something I wanted to talk about.
Talking about women’s day, we must realize that women all around the world are still struggling to get ‘equal’ rights. It has not been long since they got the right to vote even in the self proclaimed champion of women rights, i.e. USA. Women are still beaten, raped and abused in USA and the rate is higher than that in countries like Pakistan. Obviously, one reason might be the fact that most Pakistani women would not dare and talk about these.
Having said this, as you have mentioned yourself, we dont need a women’s day to realize this. As educated people, we all know this and respect the women in our families. I know you are a strong, independent lady and the men in your family have supported you in becoming what you are. I know there are cases when strong, educated women like you have to compromise too but I am sure you know that it is not because you are a woman, but because there are certain limitations imposed on you by the religion and also because you cannot hurt your family: things men in your family would do too.
You have already mentioned that the problem actually lies in lack of education. Most of the victims, like Mukhtar Mai, are in those regions of Pakistan where there is no education at all. We hardly ever hear such cases in cities like Karachi. As for treating women in an inhumane way, it will always happen as long there remains feudal system, no education, high inflation, frustration and so on.
But then, its not only physical abuse, many very well educated and ‘seemingly’ independent women are suffering from mental and verbal abuse from their husbands and yet they stay quiet thinking that its just part of petty arguments between spouses!
H, you just made up for not commenting often, that was a long comment 😛 and dude, you pretty much said what I wanted to say. Totally agree with you
I just found out there is actually an International Men’s day too 😛 So if you are one of those who think men are mazloom, then this day is definitely for you! Finally, I feel good cuz women’s day always depressed me in certain ways…it made me feel like a victim of some sort 😉
“So if you are one of those who think men are mazloom”
and don’t you think that????????
I think both are mazloom 🙂
hahaha…even if i do, i wont celebrate the men’s day either. it just makes me feel good that there is a day for men too, so men dont need to feel left out any more that there is ‘no day for men’ 😛 u guys can now join the fun too
“e that there is ‘no day for men’”
I was being sarcastic! Who said I am looking for a day dedicated to men neither It was being focused. It was all sarcasm which you missed out completely. 🙂
point hay ya k aurtain rona dhona zyda machati hain k mazlom hain aur mard hamay insaan nahi samjhtay aur uska day bhe celebrate hona chahye jab k masla dono mard aur aurto k saath hay. bus. aye aap ke samjh??hum mardo ko koi alag say din nahi chahye apna lia. 🙂
tou hamein kab chaiye! I celebrate my womanhood every single day of the year, I dont want my celebration to be confined to one single day.
Just like there are certain women who think celebrating a day would help, so are some men who think celebrating a day would make them real machos
good that you agree on not celebrating it but I don’t agree with what you said:
“Arent women also humans? Why are women treated in an inhumane way in the very first place?”
in my opinion both are treated inhumane way.
Do away with this new damned comment systems! I liked the old one better!!!
Wanted to share something…..
In U.K the national health trust has setup a unit for men being beaten up by women. According to one of the research conducted men are more likely to be at the receiving end of domestic voilence…. 🙂
I think now men’s day is coming up soon…
there already is a men’s day, read the edit in my post.
women have been beaten, abused, killed by both husbands and in-laws for centuries. roles are slowly reversing 😉
yes but with the help of other women like mother-in-law and sisters-in-law
Props to having a decent burial alhamdulilah. Doesn’t happen a lot these days, especially in Pakistan.
I know, it is difficult to do something different in a society where there is so much of bida’at and shirk
Didnt see the edit but nice one!
Once a Sahabi (RA) came to Prophet SAW and conveyed his apprehension “k mujhay namza k duran buhat waswasay atay hain.” Prophet said, “Is par bhi khuda shukar ada karo k sirf khayal attay hain.”
Your familiy follows the right rituals when it comes to dealing with the burrial of a deceased. I personally would follow the same route except for the fact that his immidiate family could have been allowed to see him , mom, wife, daughters.e.t.c..there is nothing wrong with that.
@ zubi
the women of the family, all his shara’ai mehrams were allowed to see him.
and yea, welcome to the blog